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Bring Back Our Hostel :Writer: MARTY LEVINE, City Paper :Original article from January 2006 Despite their image as a haven for backpack-toting free spirits traveling on the cheap, hostels still live or die as a business. Pittsburgh’s hostel, which opened in 1997 on Arlington Street in the Allentown neighborhood, got rave reviews from patrons who signed the guest book. “Brilliant,” “amazing” and “clean,” they enthused in 2002. “You have altered my life forever,” wrote “Roger from Conn.” But the Pittsburgh Hostel died in 2003 when the nonprofit group running it, the Pittsburgh Hostelling International Council, ran out of money. The first thing Pittsburghers need to consider when planning a new one, say the folks at Hostelling International - USA’s Silver Spring, Md., headquarters, is location, location, location. “Who goes up there -- unless you have a crack habit?” jokes John Canon, assistant director of hostel development, about the former hostel’s setting. Inside was a freshly renovated bank building with bunk beds in several large rooms and an attractive common space furnished like a homey living room, all at $22 max a night. Outside was -- ugly. Of course, our hostel wasn’t alone in closing after 2001, Canon reports: The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks reduced U.S. hostel overnight stays, especially among international visitors, by 40 percent. But the Pittsburgh location struggled from the beginning, set on a street that nobody saw as central. It was also run on too little cash to hire adequate staff and promote the place, he says. It didn’t help that Pittsburgh’s hostel kicked its patrons out during the day. That practice was a holdover from hostelling’s century-old start, when country-dwellers opened hostels in private homes, welcoming outdoorsy types who mainly needed a bunk at night. The best and easiest way for any hostel to increase business is to get the people already there to stay an extra night or three. Otherwise, muses Canon, “the hostel kicks them out at 9 in the morning, they say, ‘Eh, I’ll just go.’” Pittsburgh is lucky, he adds, that it didn’t adhere to that other mood-killing hostel staple -- a nighttime curfew. Creating a new hostel “is a pretty substantial investment,” he admits, taking $1-1.5 million to get the place up and running. Still, he believes Pittsburgh could support a 50-bed hostel, as long as we do it right: ~ Hire enough staff to leave time for the hostel’s general manager to promote the place to local universities and the visitors bureau -- even if that leaves front-desk personnel working part time as janitors. ~ Rehab an old hotel or single-room-occupancy building that needs only cosmetic changes, not an old house that needs structural renovation. ~ Make sure there’s a mix of room sizes. “You’re better off with more rooms with fewer people per room,” Canon says. “Private rooms are very much in demand,” especially by older hostel guests. And a “significant percentage” of patrons are now over 40; gone are the days when youth automatically went with hostel. ~ Get the city to pony up some funds, or give the hostel a tax break. The average hostel visitor spends $75-80 a day per city (although a third to a quarter of that money is the cost of the hostel stay). Canon thinks Pittsburgh could attract 8,000 to 10,000 overnight stays a year. ~ And make sure the hostel is “close to the action, where there’s some nightlife,” Canon says. Having been to Pittsburgh, he recommends the South Side, or between Downtown and Oakland -- locations close to public transit and to places tourists would actually want to visit. “The hostel experience is all about creating a vibe,” he says. Although Canon has talked to groups expressing interest in a Pittsburgh hostel, there is “nobody serious enough to come forward with an application,” he reports. And HI’s central office won’t be doing it themselves, since it concentrates its own hostel development on higher-percentage destinations. “I would love to see a hostel come back up in Pittsburgh,” says Amanda Charpentier, one of the few remaining active members of the group who ran the old hostel. She and other members of Pittsburgh’s Hostelling Council will be meeting in January with local people, trying to drum up support. Only trouble is, the meeting is a prelude to the Council’s immediate disbandment. Link * Hostel * Planks about the Hostel from Mark Rauterkus category:Planks_from_elsewhere